Always prefered the FA/18 Hornet myself. Nice afterburners but back when I spent heaps of time on modern flight sims the Tomcat was not my favorite choice.

It was an excellent strike fighter as well.

PD

Hahahahahaha! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

That was simply to garner a couple years out of congress! Maybe I shouldn't laugh, but to tell you the truth, it was a payload problem more than anything. An F-18C could outperform it in every role, but when the F-18E came along, that was the nail in the coffin.

-S

To what? Keep a hard to maintain strike fighter flying? There was a huge capability gap (and still is with SH's range, and will be) with the Hornet I's abysmal range and the Tomcat was NEEDED with no A-6 to fill it. Not to mention it would have trouble cutting off a Citation, let alone a fighter (by which I mean the SH). By payload problem you mean...? Any sort of weapons compatibility was not the problem of the Tomcat, but the problem of funding. Which was understandably short when the Super Dooper Hornet was to replace it in the near future.

PD

PS We argue about the Tomcat a lot it seems. :P

Considering the Super Hornet requires 5% of the maintenance of an F-14, and the payload is also and issue - you get 2 bombs with an F-14, I'd say you have a problem.

Now lets factor in it's dated avionics, it's outdated an practically useless $1 Mil Aim-54 Pheonix, and when you are talking an AMRAAM fight with an F-18E, the F-18E is a factor of 5 or 6 better in survivability over an F-14 in a Medium range setting, then you really have a useless aircraft in an F-14! The F-18E's radar is even a scanned array! This is the same type of array, though not as good as used on F-22!

There is absolutely no competition here. Iran can have it's old F-14's. They are a useless commodety if you have to engage the US navy these days.

-S

PS. I forgot to mention the lack of accuracy of the F-14 in deleivering a payload of dumb iron. Yeah - any plane can dish out JDAM, but forget about it if you are up against an ancient F-16 with an F-14 - the F-16 is going to win.

Where did you get this from? That's completely untrue. And you made me search through a big archive of USN photographs to prove it, you bugger.

http://www.news.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=5795

As for maintenance, that's just because the SH is a newer design. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a Tomcat.

I'm not saying an F-14D in its current state beats an SH in its current state. I'm saying that a modernized Tomcat would be a much more worthy, better successor to the Tomcat than an updated Hornet.

PD

Wow! They got 4 on it! Still not up to a typical F-16 or F-18 if you need more. Wonder what happens what you are dealing with 500 pounders? You are stuck with 4? Not a very good aircraft for being on station.

Still though, the F-18E's minimum requirement was for 20% total maintenance of the F-14. They are acieving 5% last I saw.

The F-14 has a nickname of the hanger queen for good reason. It actually was a major problem.

-S

PS. The updated Hornet is not a Hornet at all! - it's an entirely new aircraft in disguise. It only looks like a hornet to get it past congress. Biggest snowjob in history!

Not wow. They routinely did that. And trucked them farther than a Hornet ever will (any flavor). An F/A-18 or F-16 can carry more than four 1000 pounders? Please, show me. I know for a fact an F-16 can't. And MAYBE the Super Hornet can fit one more on the centerline. But even if it did, it would have a whopping combat radius of less than 300 miles.

And as for a "very good aircraft for being on station", the F/A-18 has TERRIBLE radius/loiter figures. That extra 4K or so in gas doesn't do much for the Super Hornet. This is the reason why I don't like it. As any CAS/Strike aircraft MUST have good radius/loiter. You can turn a Tomcat into a Strike Eagle, but you will NEVER be able to do the same to a Hornet. The Hornet needs two stations to be taken up by 480 gallon tanks (or 330 on a legacy) to get anywhere. A Tomcat carries two tanks as well, but these stations can't carry anything but the tanks.

I'm not disputing that a 20+ year old Tomcat is going to be a maintenance hog when compared to a newbuild Super Hornet. But as I said before, an updated Tomcat would outperform the updated Hornet (Super Hornet, if you prefer) in EVERY WAY. Period. Dot.

PD

Excuse me? The F-16 can truck 4x 2000 pounders! You haven't played Flacon 4 much i see. Seems we need to corrupt you and get you in a squadron! Hahahaha! You don't get the luxury of drop tanks, and if you do take a drop tank, you don't get to take an ECM pod with you. Granted, the F-18E has ECM capability built in, as well as FLIR - it all exists in the airframe so this aircraft is not limited as an F-16 would be.

The F-14 was an airframe searching for a mission since it's overwheming Soviet Bomber mission that it was designed for went kind of by the wayside now days.

They added bomb capability to it simply to give it a use so that it wouldn't be cancelled. Problem is, the higher ups at the Navy, and the Pentegon can see smoke when it happens. This was a smoke and fire show if I ever saw one. Seems the building of a whole new aircraft called the F-18E that only sort of looks like the old one slid by though. Of course, I don't doubt the Penegon and Navy sort of 'overlooked' this matter though. They sort of purposely ignored it would be my opinion, but they didn't overlook the F-14's inadequacies.

It sounds like you don't know what this new F-18 is capable of. It is not a F-18C by any means. it is approximately 25% bigger than an F-18C, and it can haul a bigger load further than any Navy fighter that has ever existed. This includes the F-14C and D. So don't tell me that the F-14 still has value in a world like today. It is a hanger queen being relegated to it's role of museum queen now days - something I truely believe it can accomplish.

Of course I am being a little crass. Don't get me wrong though - the F-14 was the answer in the 1970's to the role it was supposed to play in Soviet Doctorine which included massive waves of Soviet bombers with the hopes the one would get through and knock out an American carrier. The Pheonix Aim-54 was designed for that job and the two (F-14) did it well. The only problem is, that mission is not top priority anymore so the F-14 was looking for a job, and though they may have got 4x 1000 pounders on it, it was never very good at bombing as compared to the competition.

-S

Sorry, I misspoke. I meant more than 4 2K pounders. Which the Tomcat can do as well. And I do play more JF-18 than F4. Although the new RV is changing that. Actually, would you have any F4AF squadrons to recommend? PM me if so. I would certainly like to get into that once I get myself a headset. F4 seems like it would be a blast online, and is way more active than any other online modern combat sim.

It's not that I don't like the new Hornet. Or think the F-14D is more capable. It's just that as I have repeated several times, an updated Tomcat with avionics like the SH would blow away the Super Hornet. In every respect.

PD

I know a lot of people have a soft spot for the F-14, but that statement is nonsense. The F-14 has neither the room nor the configuration suitable for an avionics package similar to the Superhornet, and even if it did have, it is made of materials which make it more vulnerable to detection, so it would still not compare to the Superhornet on that score. Even its shape makes it more detectable at range than the Superhornet, the Superhornet's intakes, lerxes and much of its surfaces having been designed to suppress and dissipate radar energy and IR emissions from air friction. It is far and away a better aircraft than the F-14, having been designed for multi-mission capability from the outset.

Incidentally, as someone mentioned the suggestion in an earlier post, the F-14 was in fact tried out as an aggressor at Fallon in 1985 (Bu 159831 to be specific).

The F-14 is out of date, you might not like it, but you have to face it.

:D Chock

Guys, I KNOW I am fantasizing in every respect. Believe me, I know the Tomcat died over a decade ago. I am saying IF it was modernized and redesigned as the SH was.

PD

Fair comment then, I'm still waiting for the USAF to realise what a terrible mistake they've made, and recommission the B-17 :up:

:D Chock

Just to cheer you up, here is a pic of that very aircraft at Fallon...

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j1...naggressor.jpg

:D Chock

Somewhat on-topic - has an F-16 ever carried 4x 2000-pounders as an operational payload? Never heard of that actually happening in anything but Falcon 4 :88)

I think scrapping them like that may have been a bit of a rush, but every airframe has their age limits I suppose. I'm not much enthused for either the SH or the JSF, either, but updates are updates.

I'm sure we all miss battleships the very same way, but an F-14 nowadays is really an aviation equivalent of the navy's battleships. She may have a big gun and impressive stats, but we'll just have to accept that they're gone in favour of the more "boring" systems today :cry: